Akihiko TANAKA is President of the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies (GRIPS). Before assuming the current position, he had been Professor of International Politics at the Institute for Advanced Studies on Asia, The University of Tokyo, for many years. He served as President of Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) from April, 2012 to September, 2015. Mr. Tanaka was also Executive Vice President of The University of Tokyo (2009-2011). He obtained his bachelor’s degree in International Relations at the University of Tokyo in 1977 and Ph.D. in Political Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1981. He has numerous books and articles on world politics and security issues in Japanese and English including The New Middle Ages: The World System in the 21st Century (Tokyo: The International House of Japan, 2002) and Japan in Asia: Post-Cold-War Diplomacy (Tokyo: Japan Publishing Industry Foundation for Culture, 2017). He received the Medal with Purple Ribbon in 2012 for his academic achievements.